


The Nightman Cometh

by 5225438



Category: IASIP, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Comfort, Comfort/Angst, Delusions, Dennis isnt in this. Frank is mentioned ONCE., F/M, Hallucinations, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Mental Breakdown, Past Child Abuse, Sorry chardee is canon here >;3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-11
Updated: 2016-03-11
Packaged: 2018-05-26 01:19:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6218020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/5225438/pseuds/5225438
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's been with you most of your life. And for most of your life, people have been trying to convince you that he isn't real, oh but you know. You know the truth. He is real. A fake thing couldn't do the things he does. A fake thing couldn't hold you the way he does.</p><p>A fake thing couldn't hurt you the way he does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Nightman Cometh

**Author's Note:**

> GOOD LORD THIS IS MY FIRST FIC IM POSTING!!!!!\
> 
> CharDee is canon here so please don't hate the fic for just that. Also sorry for any spelling errors I honestly tried my best.

\----------------------Charlie----------------------

  
He's been with you most of your life. And for most of your life, people have been trying to convince you that he isn't real, oh but you know. You know the truth. He is real. A fake thing couldn't do the things he does. A fake thing couldn't hold you the way he does.

  
A fake thing couldn't hurt you the way he does.

  
You've been to numerous therapists when you were younger. All of which tried convincing you the same thing. Over, and over, and over. They tried telling you it was your Uncle Jack the whole time. That he broke you and now you have these "delusions" and "hallucinations". They tried to convince you that he did bad things to you when you were younger. But that just isn't the truth. You know that's all a bunch of bullshit. You know it was the Nightman that would visit you late at night. It was the Nightman that would touch you. It was the Nightman that broke you.

  
Mac is the only one who believes you that he's real. He even helps you when the Nightman comes into your room at night, though that doesn't happen very often anymore, and you can usually tell when it's about to happen. You'll get headaches, and start to get more paranoid. You can feel him following you, but he doesn't actually visit you untill days pass by with those feelings. When youre not feeling like your head is going to explode, youre still slightly anxious. The therapists were right on one thing, the Nightman did break you. You're a 40 year old man and can't have an intimate relationship, because you know the Nightman is watching. He's always watching.

  
The gang does know about the Nightman, but only from that play you wrote. As far as they know, the Nightman is a fictional character. Completely made up from the fucked up depths of your mind. But that's wrong. They're wrong. He's real, we went over this already. You let the gang believe what they want to believe, plus you don't really feel like explaining it all to them. It's all too personal and fucked up to explain, plus if you DID tell them, they would completely forget about it the next day. So theres really no reason to tell them the truth.

  
You've been dating Dee for a while now. The gang completely flipped their shit when they found out, but it was bound to happen sometime. The two losers of their small friend group, it only makes sense if they date. You haven't told her about the Nightman. The real Nightman. Not the one from the play that she knows. You haven't told her because he hasn't come to visit you lately, which actually makes you more anxious. When he doesn't visit you for long periods of time, he hits you like a brick wall. When that happens, all hell breaks loose. You really hope that isn't the case here.

  
You've spent the last couple of nights at Dee's place. It's much nicer than yours. She even has plates and forks. Frank doesn't seem to mind. He just wants you to be happy, though you do kind of miss his egg shaped body next to yours.

  
The past couple of days youve been getting headaches. The kind of headaches that warn you he's coming, but youve been so happy with Dee. Spending so much time together you push it aside, tell yourself 'thats a problem for future Charlie'.

  
You're laying in her bed right now. She's asleep, snoring lightly. You think it's cute she does that, and you think it's cute that she completely denies it. It's well past midnight. You can tell by the darkness outside her window, and the faint light from the street lamps, also the clock next to you says 2:44 A.M. You like being awake at times like this. Everything is quiet, and to you it seems as though everyone on the planet has just dissappeared. There's no cars driving by, no birds chirping, nothing. And it sooths you, in an odd way. But tonight it doesn't. A wave of anxiety overcomes you. He's coming.

  
You know he appears in the darkness, but you can't find any really dark spots in Dee's room. Everything is pretty lit up by the street lamps and- oh god. Dee has a closet. The door is slightly opened. He's there. He's there and Mac isn't here and- God, Dee. Dee doesn't know. Dee has no idea about any of this. You can't just wake her up. No, you can't even move. If you do, he will know you're awake and it'll make things worse. You start shaking, but you can't control it, you hope to God he doesn't notice. But you know he does. You can feel his presence come closer. You feel him lean down close to you, and at this point youre crying pretty heavely, but you muffle yourself to not wake up Dee. You hope to God she doesn't wake up any time soon.

  
You can hear his breathing. You cover your mouth to stop yourself from screaming. You feel a hand being placed on your hip, and it's getting hard to breathe now, why is it so hard to breathe. Your body is going numb, his hands are going all over you. Where his hands touch it burns, and makes you cry more. He breathes into your ear and talks to you, that's the breaking point for you. You let out a high pitch scream and gasps for air. His talking turns to slightly louder speaking, youre shaking like a chihuahua, and crying like a 2 year old who just got his candy stolen. You cover your ears but he just gets louder. You try screaming to mask his.

\----------------------Dee----------------------

  
You wake up to hear Charlie screaming. Your immediate thought is "Lord someone is breaking in.". You turn on the lamp thats on your night stand, and grab the bad thats between the darkness of your night stand and your bed. Once youre standing, ready to knock a bitch out, you look down and realize Charlie is fine, well, he's not hurt or anything from what you can tell. "What... the fuck?" you whisper to yourself. You've never seen him act like this. Actually, you've never seen ANYONE act like this before. He's curled up in a ball, shaking and crying, covering his own ears and making a sound thats a mixture of screaming, crying, and gasping for air.

  
You crawl over top of the bed close to him, you try to rub his arm. "Hey, Charlie, it's Dee everythings okay-" he's crying so hard he's having trouble breathing. Youre not sure if you should call an ambulance or something, you realize you can't because youre pretty sure he doesn't have insurance. "Charlie you need to snap out of i-" you try shaking him and he screams bloody murder, he tries swatting at you without removing his hands from his ears, which to you looks just plain rediculous.

  
You know that Mac has known Charlie ever since they were kids. You run into your living room, leaving your bedroom door open so you can keep an eye on Charlie at the same time. You try dialing his home phone, and nothing. Next you try his cell phone and behold, he answers. You can hear faint club music in the background. "Dee? The fuck are you doing calling me at almost 3 in the morning? It better be an emergancy." "Yeah it kind of is-... Are you at a gay club right now?" "Uhh..." you hear men cheering in the background "...no? Anyway whats up." You sigh and rub the bridge of your nose to try and calm down. "Charlie. He's, well, I don't know what's wrong with him. He's completely freaking the fuck out and I don't know what to do. Like he's finally lost his damn mind, and I know you've known him since the beggining of time itself so I thought-" you were cut off by a very stern voice "Dee. Shut up. I'm on my way." and he hung up.

  
5 minutes later, without even knocking, Mac walks straight into your apartment. You've just been sitting on the couch waiting for him, because what the hell is there to do? You share eye contact with him for a second. Faint gasping comes from the bedroom and he heads that way. You get up and follow him but stop yourself at the door way. You don't want to get in the way of whatever he's about to do.

  
\----------------------Mac----------------------

  
He's really gotten himself into a pickle here. You haven't seen him this fucked up in a while. Usually when he has his spills, he let's you know that he's feeling it coming on days before it actually does, but this time he didn't. This time he let the paranoia build up until it exploded, which is right now. You'll think about this later, right now you have to help your friend.

  
You sit yourself next to him, and spreak your legs. You try to pick him up from his spot, but you just end up struggling to drag him. Eventually, you get him in your lap and you start to rock him and make shooshing sounds. He's calmed down to a state where he isn't screaming or gasping for air, but he's still crying and shaking. You rock him for about 30 minutes, his crying has stopped but he's still whimpering, as though he's about to burst out crying any second. You slowly reach your hands up to grab his, which are still clenched onto his ears. You manage to get a slight grip on his very sweaty hands, and gently cross his arms in his own chest. You hold his hands on either sides of his body to make sure he doesn't attack anyone. He has attacked you before, but that was ages ago, before you knew what to actually do.

 

"So... What the fuck was all of that?" You actually forgot you were in Dee's apartment. Her voice is low and sort of shaky, she slowly approaches the bed and sits near your feet. "I really don't want to go into detail incase he like, doesn't want you knowing and stuff..." you both look at each other, and you can tell she's kind of pissed off. "Mac, Charlie and I have been dating for months. He obviously didn't tell me shit about this because he was afraid of me knowing, and he probably is still afraid. So you better tell me now because I know he won't ever tell me." She's glaring at you, her voice raised slightly mid-sentence. You sigh.

 

"So like." you lower your voice more, to make sure Charlie doesn't hear you. Though youre sure he's out like a light. "When Charlie was younger, his Uncle or some shit lived with him, right?" She nods to let you know she's following along. "So I guess his uncle moved in when Charlie was like 7 or something. But his mom didn't know that his Uncle liked to touch kids and shit. So he would touch Charlie like, a lot." You notice her eyes get wider, which is a sign she's never expected something like this. "Yeah... His uncle moved out when he was like in his teens or some shit, but he's had these hallucinations and delusions of him ever since. He calls him the Nightman. Yeah from his play, right? Except this thing is much worse. Much scarier... Usually he'll warn me before he has breakdowns like this. He actually hasn't had one in a couple months which is kind of impressive... But he didn't warn me this time..." 

 

It's quiet in the apartment for a while. Youre both staring at Charlie, Dee is probably surprised at how much Mac managed to calm him down. "Hey, Dee?" She looks up at him.

 

"Don't mention this to him in the morning, please."


End file.
